Surviving Toxic Authority

A self-described mental health advocate, Lena credits therapy with helping her overcome the challenges of her past and cope with ongoing depression and anxiety. By appearance, Lena is a petite thirty-something woman with dark, flowing hair and expressive eyes. Lena's vibrant personality, creative talent, and career all fail to reveal the trauma she has endured.

Growing up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Lena enjoyed an idyllic early childhood, forged in a bygone era where children were allowed to roam free and explore without parental supervision. Lena loved to ride her bike to the park and visit the local ice cream shop. While Green Bay was majority white, Lena was readily welcomed into the Leave it to Beaver lives of her neighbor and friends.

In high school, Lena juggled extracurriculars, academics, and her social life with apparent ease. True to her penchant for the arts, Lena sang in choir, designed set pieces for the theater, and played volleyball, all while becoming involved in her school's cheerleading team in her sophomore year. As a flyer, Lena performed aerial stunts and was positioned on top of cheer formations. From cheer camp to team slumber parties, Lena created lasting memories and close bonds with her teammates. Everything seemed perfect in Lena's life.

Anexoria

For her junior year, Lena was invited to join the varsity cheer team, which would seem like a welcomed progression. The coach set the team's sights on a national victory, and Lena and her teammates endured rigorous training in stunt formations and tumbling sequences. Whereas Lena enjoyed her coach in the previous year, she was surprised at how sharply the coach's tone changed. At first, she rationalized that the verbal attacks were how team members would improve. One day, however, the coach called all of the flyers out to line up on the gym floor and began judging each one by "single-basing," or lifting each girl by himself. In cheerleading, flyers tense their upper and lower body muscles to control their weight while being lifted and tossed in the air. The coach yelled at each girl for not tightening her body, and even went as far as saying that Lena felt like a cow. The coach told the flyers that "light girls win, and fat girls don't" and "the smaller you are, the higher you fly." At the time, Lena weighed ninety-five pounds.

Lena and her teammates were shocked at the coach's behavior. Yet, the girls deferred to the coach, thinking that losing weight was perhaps indeed the path to a national championship. Lena and the other four flyers made a pact to lose as much weight as possible. Their plan was simple but deadly - they would "just stop eating," and hopefully their coach's verbal abuse would relent. During one practice, the coach's insults were overheard by a friend in the nearby recreation room, who came out to check if Lena was ok. Lena told her friend to let it go, even though he clearly thought the coach crossed a line. In hindsight, Lena attributes this decision to Stockholm syndrome. Asked why she did not bring the issue up with her parents, Lena mentioned the stoic Asian culture which keeps problems from being heard. Although Lena did not realize it at the time, her life became preoccupied with her coach's abuse. She internalized his verbal abuse, believing that strict food restriction and over-exercise were necessary to win cheer competitions.

Eventually, Lena's coach's verbal and emotional abuse led to a years-long eating disorder. Even when Lena's weight fell to seventy-eight pounds in the throes of anorexia, her coach continued to berate her and the other girls on the team. At one point, Lena's best friend told her that she "found a new solution." At a family barbeque, someone made a point about Lena's best friend not eating, so Lena's friend conspicuously ate so that people would stop nagging her. However, Lena's friend later vomited in private, giving rise to a new way of avoiding food. In short, Lena's friend's "solution" was bulimia. Like her best friend, Lena began occasionally purging when forced to eat by her family. Later that year, Lena's cheer team won at nationals, and her coach took the victory as validation of his tactics.

In Lena's senior year, her cheerleading coach was investigated by the school and National Cheerleaders Association (NCA). He was found guilty of mistreating the high school athletes and was fired. As fallout from the coach's investigation, Lena's family discovered her eating disorder. Concerned for Lena's health, her mother confronted her about her dieting and shrinking figure. Her concern was justified: anorexia is associated with the highest mortality rate among all psychiatric disorders. Lena's mother arranged for a nutritionist and dietitian who specialized in eating disorders to provide her daughter with anorexia treatment. Lena, however, had turned eighteen at this point and dismissed the counsel of others (including her physician), thinking that they were overly dramatic. In turn, Lena's nutritionist and dietician flagged Lena as needing therapy. By this time, however, Lena packed her bags and moved to college in San Francisco. She was enraptured by the sights and sounds of the city, a world away from the suburban, grassy-lawned streets of Green Bay. She had no interest in attending therapy sessions as she immersed herself in her new college life. Lena's mother would frequently call from Wisconsin and remind Lena to go to her therapy appointments. Lena would lie about attending the sessions to placate her mother, often making up excuses such as the therapist having no availability or claiming to have attended the sessions when she actually had not.

The turning point in this saga of anorexia was when Lena sustained some major whiplash in a car accident and her boyfriend at the time forced her to eat, take medications, and to go to therapy appointments. Lena reluctantly attended therapy sessions, thinking that she was perfectly healthy. Around this time, her best friend on the cheer team connected with her, and they commiserated over their challenging diets and the contradictory trauma and nostalgia of their cheerleading days. Lena's best friend shared about her brittle bones, which had been weakened by malnutrition, and her recovery from anorexia and bulimia. She wanted Lena to take corrective action for herself. Lena was unconvinced that she had a problem, despite Lena's friend's repeated and insistent pleas. Lena's friend ultimately ended up crying hysterically and screaming at Lena to open up to her therapist about their cheerleading experience.

Prior to this, Lena had been half-heartedly going through the motions during therapy, giving vague accounts of her upbringing and family life. However, when Lena finally opened up about her cheer coach, her therapist noticed a distinct shift in Lena's body language and attitude. Through further discussion, Lena experienced an epiphany and the invisible wall she had constructed for emotional protection suddenly shattered. Soon after, Lena confided everything - the coach, her eating disorder, and the pressures of being the 'golden child' - to her therapist. Although sometimes Lena felt as if she was reliving painful memories, she eventually grew more comfortable with expressing her past. Gradually, the therapist helped Lena acknowledge the extent of their cheerleading coach's abuse, and its effect on her mental and physical health. Lena's therapist assured her that her high school cheer experience was abnormal. She reframed the coach's role, stating that the coach's responsibility was to help, not to harm. His actions were fundamentally inappropriate and wrong. Still, questions remained etched into Lena's mind. Why had the coach caused her and her friends such harm? Why had he mistreated them, as an adult in charge of their safety? With the therapist's guidance, Lena's anger and resentment eventually subsided.

As Lena continued therapy, her desire for food naturally returned and her weight stabilized. After several sessions, Lena realized that she wanted a hamburger and that "food smelled so good." She stopped weighing herself and would occasionally check in with her therapist. She thrived in college, enjoying her "normal" dorm experience and newfound freedom away from home in a big city. One of Lena's major takeaways from this therapy experience was that "it's ok to not be ok" – sometimes, people need help.

Workplace abuse

Lena grew from her struggles with an abusive coach and her learnings helped her navigate another challenge that arose years later: a toxic work environment. Initially, Lena's work environment seemed fine and she liked her co-workers. After about three months on the job, Lena was invited to a meeting with the company's senior leadership. Lena's manager had warned Lena that she (the manager) had an unusual rapport with the CEO and to not be alarmed at what was said. Nevertheless, Lena was shocked to hear the CEO curse and verbally abuse her manager and her colleagues. When Lena was asked to present a swatch photo to the CEO during a meeting, the CEO, who prided herself on her sense of artistic design, berated Lena, asking, "Are you high?" and declaring the swatch photo unusable. Shocked, Lena wanted to slink away for the rest of the day, but knew that she could not. As time passed, the CEO found new ways to call Lena incompetent and call her work ethic into question. The CEO's abuse was not limited to Lena; she was aggressive towards employees in all departments, some of whom were even related to her.

Lena began meeting with a therapist remotely. She also spoke with her older sister, who advised her to leave her job, and Lena started searching for other job opportunities. She remained at the company for three more months before landing a new job. During this time, the degrading remarks from the CEO and unprofessional environment triggered Lena. Memories of her negative high school cheer experience came flooding back. The CEO and Lena's old cheer coach shared remarkable similarities. The CEO even claimed, "I know you think I'm hard on you, but sometimes you need it." Lena spiraled into depression and began suffering from panic attacks.

With the support of her family and new therapist, Lena realized the compensation of her job was not worth the stress and sadness she felt. She decided that work should be enjoyable and fulfilling, not something she dreads every morning. On the day Lena officially quit her job, she quietly went into her office and packed up her desk and felt an immense weight lifted from her shoulders; she felt liberated and calm. Lena drafted and sent a resignation email. The next day, the VP began reaching out to her, begging her to stay. No amount of pleading could convince Lena to change her mind. She emerged from therapy determined to put her mental health first, which meant leaving this position in the past.

Lena's workplace issues reinforced to her the importance of therapy. Therapy provided Lena with a sense of empowerment and control over her workplace dynamics. While Lena might have felt powerless in the face of her CEO's abuse – especially as it echoed her past trauma – she gained a sense of agency and self-value. Over a period of time, Lena's panic attacks subsided and she approached her new job with hope and excitement.

Therapy

Lena believes the earlier therapy she received in college made her better-equipped to recover from the verbal abuse of her high school cheerleading coach. Lena believes this initial therapy guided her to seek out therapy again when exposed to a toxic workplace. Although Lena has a strong support system consisting of her boyfriend, family, and close friends, she credits talking to a professional with preventing her from spiraling into depression. Lena thinks that without a therapist, she would have isolated herself from her support system and her depression and panic attacks would have been more severe.

Lena recommends anyone who struggles with mental health issues to try finding a therapist and to try out different providers until finding one that is a good fit. Lena found her current therapist on BetterHelp, after trying out three other ones. Lena also believes therapy is an ongoing process, often requiring more than a dozen sessions to prove effective.

Lena hopes her story will resonate with others dealing with mental health issues, from adolescents with eating disorders and their parents, to long-term professionals struggling with workplace hostility. She also acknowledges the silent suffering that many people with mental health issues endure. On the surface, someone may appear to possess an ideal lifestyle (such as Lena's quintessential All-American upbringing), while in reality, they are contending with severe mental and emotional problems. By regularly talking about mental health, educating others, and candidly sharing personal stories - just as Lena has - people may be able to gain greater awareness and access to critical mental health therapy.